


Burn

by double_negative



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Burns, Fire, Gen, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-03-05 14:55:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13390227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/double_negative/pseuds/double_negative
Summary: He lets go.





	Burn

**Author's Note:**

> Mind the tags.  
> This fic is a dead dove. Do not eat.

He can almost feel the strings connecting him to this world. Pull one and his hand raises. Pull all of them in just the right way and his whole body floats above the floor, levitating menacingly. It would have been demeaning, humiliating if he wasn't the one who drove himself to movement, picked himself up, agreed to whatever the strings were asking of him. The only thing he can still find pride in - he controls it all. He can choose now.

The strings tug and tighten, but he doesn't move anymore. They ring and vibrate with the weight pulling them down, down, down while they want to stretch up, but he doesn't obey. They are worn and tired, so familiar: hatred, rage, anger, grief, pain. Things that make him move forward, give his life a semblance of meaning.

When he was a child, he let those things overwhelm him, drag him wherever his destruction was needed. As an adult, he feels them settle into his bones, aching with need to move, but he stays still. It's hard, harder every day, and his breathing is ragged already and his mind is screaming at him when he tries to will himself into stillness.

He curls up on himself, bony knees drawn to heaving chest. It hurts so much to be the one in control. It hurts so much to stay alone in his mind, to stay himself. He knows he can just pull his mask on, put everything on mute, but it's an easy way out. There is no single reason his mask would help with psychic interference. It's a comfort item, a childhood memento he attached too much meaning to. If he can do it with a mask, he can do without. He controls it.

At times like this, it comes to him. He doesn't need others to tell him what to do. Where's enough hatred in himself to drive him to movement nowadays. If he blinds himself to others, his own feelings rise up, bubbling and ugly and hatred is the first one to flow to the surface, spilling over and out. He hates it all, but most of all he hates himself. For being so weak, so affected by all the filth around him. For being so pliant and malleable. For letting the ugliness, the wretchedness of the world around mold him into something just as ugly and evil.

He lets his hatred take form and it burns on his fingertips. It's not his usual fire, not the one that can envelop him whole without any harm, this fire is his own, this fire _burns_. He watches the skin on his fingers redden and puff up, irritated, losing the definition, watches his fingerprints change shape until they are completely gone. His skin melts, glistening sickly red at first, but then it bubbles and boils, liquified by the heat. It dries out just as quickly, turning dark and then black at the center where his flesh crumbles off, turned to ash and coal.

He tries to remember the time it used to hurt.

It's pathetic, destroying himself like this, but it's control. It's a last ditch effort to prove he can still do something, that he can still fight it. He can still get better if he just proves it to himself. He knows deep inside, that it's ultimately useless, but he holds on to illusion of control until his skin blisters and breaks and his flesh is simmering, red hot. At least his scars are his own.

 

***

 

His strings are going through her flesh now and she has no choice but to obey. The girl screams and screams and he's screaming through her. He can control this. He is her control. She can't struggle, she can't reject him. It's exhilarating, should be, because for the first time, he's the owner oh his own destiny, but this body is not his own anymore, this life is not his own, this fate is not his. They're all just pawns like he himself used to be, dancing puppets on strings.

She screams and screams and screams and wails of anguish don't stop. When he hurts her, it does nothing to him anymore. He's untouchable. There're no illusions anymore. It's just as worthless and empty as it has always been. He can't escape this, he can't escape himself.


End file.
